The Book of Longing
by evil-annie
Summary: Korra reflects on her relationship with Asami. Tenderness & heartbreak.


Things you will NOT find in this fic:

-Love triangle drama

-Mako bashing

-Coming out drama

-Korra being a well-adjusted human being despite knowing from an early age that

she's the most powerful human on the planet

Things you WILL find in this fic

-ANGST/Romance

-Sexual content

Note: This story does not take into account the events of the Book 2 finale, as it was largely written before it aired.

**The Book of Longing**

Asami. I've decided to write about you. I think maybe if I put this into words, it won't hurt so much anymore. Three years is a long time to be desperately unhappy about the dissolution of a bond. Your absence is a constant burden. So when my thoughts drift your way, instead of torturing myself with the endless remembering, I will write them here, in the hopes of freeing myself from them. I am exhausted. The ache for you has worn me down. So I write this, because I am sick to death of missing you.

When the thoughts race down my arms, percolating into words, guilt always escapes first. Your face flashes through my mind, sometimes his, too. The day our eyes locked and I knew all was lost, the nights spent searching his lips for a trace of yours, the weeks, months, years of _don't look, don't think, don't speak, don't touch, don't feel. Run, run, run. _Pulling him off of you and onto me in an endless dance, never what he needed, never what I wanted. That morning on the Southern tundra, it could have set me free. _'Can we pretend that didn't happen?' _Spirits, Asami, you should have seen then. Those words, an act of mercy. I'm sorry. I never could manage to say those words to you. I write them here, pure and true, but meaningless all the same. I'm sorry, my love. Please forgive me.

I go back to that day in the woods all the time. It's a wound I can't stop circling. The hope in your eyes. Your hands trembling. The lunch you packed yourself, servants be damned. A date, our first. How did we ever make it past that? Your grace has always amazed me, no more than on that day. Your face suspended above me as we lay beneath the oak tree. Your eyes so full of love, searching for the same in mine. I wanted to show you 'Sami. I wanted us to be happy. But there you were, on top of me, pinning me down, the heat of you suddenly smothering. Hard to move, harder to breathe. Too much to take, my spirit rebelled. _I am slipping away. _Eyes faded out of focus, head lolled. Filtered through the years of my memory, the fear in your voice is still sharp enough to make me bleed. _'Korra, stay with me.'_ Too late. Up. Out. Away. Gone. There were tears in your eyes as you rolled off of me and kissed my cheek. But you held me safe in your arms until I returned.

That's not how I want to remember us. I'm not sure how much I'll end up writing here, but I don't want this to be filled with only the bad memories and hard times. I want to remember those weeks when we shared a flat, the way your hands always reached for me in the middle of the night, the thousand tender things I whispered that I prayed you'd forget by the light of day. I want to remember teaching you to ride Naga, and every joke you made at my expense. I want to remember swimming in the bay, late-night dinners with Mako and Bo, the first time you said me you loved me, the way my dad wrapped you up in his arms when I told him you were mine, that glorious time you electrocuted the guy at the club who was hassling us, making you breakfast in bed, being terrible at making you breakfast in bed, holding your hand as we wandered the streets downtown, dancing like goofballs at society balls just because we could. I want to remember every single smile I ever brought to your face.

Drinks. It had to be drinks. There was a science at work there. The invitation rolling casually off my tongue, practiced. The four shots of firewater already warming my veins, calculated. Before, you can tell yourself that your plans for the evening are idle fantasy. After, you can blame the alcohol. Or better yet, pretend you don't remember. What am I saying? You would never do any of those things. _I _can tell myself, _I_ can blame, _I _can pretend. Never claiming my desire. It's what it took to get me there. I can't regret it. When you slipped onto the stool next to mine, my heart stopped. I don't mean it skipped a beat. It stopped. Seconds passed. My eyes struggled to focus. _Skirt, knee socks, slender fingers, stern eyes, familiar lips, killer rack oh spirits save me. _My heartbeat returned with such force it knocked the wind from my lungs, forcing out a single word. _'Fuck.' _Arched eyebrow. _'Pardon?' _ _'What? Nothing. No. Huh?' _I think I would have died right then and there if not for the twinkle in your eye and a hand on my knee. _'I'm glad I came.' _ Shots followed. Not much talking. I think you knew it had to be like this. No, I know you did. You always understood the meaning beneath my words, always answered the plea in my eyes and the need in my touch. I focused on the shape of the words. Didn't want to have to say it twice. Couldn't, probably. _'I want to fuck you.' _Not the slightest hesitation. _'That can be arranged.' _A finger traced my thigh, and then you were gone. Out the door without so much as a backwards glance. Vision clouded with drink and lust, I stumbled after you into the alley. Broken glass beneath our feet. Your arms pinned tightly above your head. Skirt hiked up, panties pulled to the side. Teeth tearing at the tender skin of my ear. My breath fiery against your neck. A long string of girls preceded you, and a long string of girls have followed in your wake. I've left them in this very alley, in a dozen alleys just like this one. Or in their bed, in _my _bed, in _Tenzin's bed. _But after you came and I turned to leave, you slipped your hand into mine. You didn't chase me, you didn't pull me back. You simply entwined our fingers as though you'd been doing it for years, and we walked together into the night.

I can point to the exact moment I started to shatter. Can you? Did you know then what was happening, the profundity of those cracks? You flipped me over and climbed on top of me when we were tangled amongst your sheets. A turtleduck on its back. _Korra, _a low growl when I tried to reverse the maneuver. A hard stare. Then softly in my ear, '_It's alright, baby.' _A flash of tenderness quickly supplanted by the return of your sultry smirk. _'It is my pleasure to serve the Avatar.' _Every nerve in my body, screaming and awake, urged me to flee_. _But there was something un-nameable in your eyes, and it held me frozen as you descended to your knees. Naked and splayed, your head between my thighs, I have never felt so safe. A miracle. I let you in.

_All I ever wanted to be was the Avatar. _Only you heard the underside of those words. _Being Korra is not enough. _You had no interest in the Avatar. I wasn't a prize, an item on a bucket list, a trophy wife. The power of Raava held no sway over you. You loved Korra. Me. I never placed any value on the human parts of me before I met you. The parts that were vulnerable, awkward. The parts that delighted you the most. I was a weapon. Of peace, yes, but a weapon all the same. Fingers made to be clenched into fists. Shoulders broad to hold the weight of the world. But who's to say these arms weren't meant to hold you? Who's to say I'm not the puzzle your brain was made to solve? It sure feels like it sometimes. I am more than my destiny.

I've been thinking about when we first met. Tarrlok's party. Your father talking to me about greatness. My guard collapsing under the weight of expectation. And then there you were, on Mako's arm. One glance was all it took. Disarmingly beautiful, but it was more than that. Something inside my chest unfurled, reached for you. And I knew. _Here is the girl with the power to undo me. _What would you have done, Asami, if you had seen your ruination reflected in another's eyes? I wanted to throttle Mako for bringing you there. I wanted to cast away my own traitorous heart. But most of all, I wanted to never, ever look at you again. To deny your existence with all of my senses.

_I will die before I give you power over me. _A mantra of sorts. Every time I felt the balance shifting, a reminder. Lock you out, push you away, play at indifference. Always a different parry. Thoughtless words. Sometimes no words at all. Eyes that slid right over you. _Care less._ Yes, that one every time. _Retain control. _I didn't understand the power of your echo. _I give you power over me._ There was nothing I could take from you that you hadn't already offered freely. I was so afraid that if I gave myself to you, some parts would be unrecoverable. But that's not how it works. Love doesn't rob you of the most precious parts of yourself. Even now, lost in you after all these years, I remain.

You followed me South. I'll never know why. I remember the lines: bonding, friendship, space from the boys while the dust settled. But you had a mansion, a fortune, a multinational corporation, and still you chose to come home with me. The graceful city girl, awkward and ill at ease in my native land. It only took a moment of weakness and a hereditary (of sorts) fondness for penguin sledding to send us tumbling down the path I had been avoiding since our meeting. I just wanted to see you smile. It worked, too well, perhaps. With your cheeks rosy from excitement but your fingertips turning blue, I cupped your hands in my own and delicately encircled them in flames. You huddled closer to the warmth, closer, closer until our noses touched. My head tilted upwards and your lips enveloped mine. A rush, my spirit extending backwards into eternity, a hundred pairs of eyes opening, a hundred voices, whispers rolling into thunder. _Yes_. A sigh of relief, held ten thousand years. A certainty. And then my own voice. _'Can we pretend that didn't happen?'_ The fire in your eyes would have cowed Ozai. No time to react before your mouth found mine again, and I swear I could taste your fury. Tongue and teeth in equal measure. You left me bloody-lipped and ashamed, lost amongst the swirling snow.

In that field amongst the fire lilies, your '_I love you' _was a promise. The words caught in my throat, but I smothered you in kisses and that was enough. We wrestled, laughing, and made love until the sun went down. It was a perfect day. Time passed, though, and 'I love you' became a question, then an accusation. I wasn't ready. Didn't trust. Still believed in caring less. Nothing less than losing you could have changed me. It shattered any illusions I harbored that I had control, power, the upper hand, anything other than a desperate need for you. _'Why won't you let us be okay, Korra? I don't want to live in this darkness with you_._'_

I drowned myself in Lin's bedsheets. I know how you'd feel about that, but I just needed someone to hurt. Someone who would hurt me back. No tenderness there. No sweet nothings. No heart. She threw me out when I slipped and called her 'Sami. All for the best. I only wanted you.

I finally found you, back on the tundra. Sure I'd found the words. Something was missing in your eyes. _Trust._ The force of the realization almost enough to carry me away from that place. But no, I wanted to show you. Hard-won peace, serenity at the end of desperation. _'I love you.'_ Skinned knees and a skinned heart, all I had to offer. _'That isn't enough, Korra.' 'Wait. Asami.' _A hand raised above my head. '_I can make the sun shine.' _With a flick of the wrist, clouds parted. The beginnings of a smile played on your lips. All I had ever wanted. I closed the distance between us in half a heartbeat. I kissed you as the snow whipped around our feet and sent us skyward. I traced your tongue with mine as we soared into the light. A hundred feet above the ground, buoyed by my icy hurricane, I searched you for a bit of difference, and moaned in relief when I found none. But when I gently returned you to the earth, you backed away and turned from me. _'It doesn't matter, Korra. I can't be with you.' 'But-' 'You don't know what love is. It's not supposed to be like this. Love isn't pain. It isn't tears and blood and always afraid.' 'Asami, I swear to you-' 'You don't make me happy. Being with you doesn't make me happy.' _And what could I possibly say to that? What could anyone?

This exercise has been pointless. I will carry this loss through all of my lives.


End file.
